


to your eternity

by delizeita



Category: Doki Doki Literature Club! (Visual Novel)
Genre: Amnesia, Character Death, Depression, Existentialism, Families of Choice, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insanity, Mental Instability, Murder, Paranoia, Psychological Horror, Suicide, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26658352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delizeita/pseuds/delizeita
Summary: He might be going insane.The overwhelming sense of déjà vu never leaves.The blue-eyed girl is gone, and no one remembers her, there are bruises and band-aids under Natsuki's sleeves and the edges of Yuri's ornamental knives are stained with blood.And there's something strange about Monika.Alternate title: MC and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.
Relationships: Monika & Natsuki & Protagonist & Sayori & Yuri (Doki Doki Literature Club!)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	to your eternity

The déjà vu begins even before his life fell apart.

It starts when he's walking to school alone, like how he always has.

The morning sun hurts his eyes and he squints in irritation, raising a hand for temporary relief. His house is close enough to walk and although he wouldn't mind company, finding someone would have been inconvenient and awkward. He has a feeling his neighbours have a daughter his age, but dismisses the thought. He'd never seen her, nevertheless met her.

There are a couple of girls on the other side of the road wearing his school's uniform, skirts fluttering as they giggle and chitter about topics he couldn't dream of understanding. They would probably be gone next week, he decides. Most people only last the first week before asking their parents to drive them.

Dragging his attention back to his own thoughts, he ponders about the anime he watched the night before. It had been worth it, the ending was satisfying and he's already anticipating the next episode that was scheduled to come out in the next week. However, the lack of sleep is beginning to catch up with him. He could feel he has become significantly more irritable lately, and his eyes hurt in the direct sunlight. 

His head throbs with fatigue, and he silently scolds himself for staying up so late on a school night. He vaguely remembers someone scolding him for the same thing.

A bright smile comes to the front of his mind. He sees a fleeting glimpse of bright blue eyes.

_Sayori._

He blinks. Where had that come from all of a sudden?

He has a slight impression of that name, but it's too vague, and seems to be something that he forgot long ago. Now that he thinks about it again, it appears to be some sort of distant memory. Having to wait out the front of his house everyday, someone bothering him while walking to school toge-

What was that?

Obviously . . . obviously he had always walked to school alone, right? It had become just him all by himself after-

He pauses abruptly. He was sure he had never known someone called Sayori, so where did the ‘after’ come from?

He clenches his fist, and realizes for the first time that he might have forgotten something important.

\-----  
\--  
_"You are my sunshine, / My only sunshine."_  
\--  
\-----

Being offered to join the Literature Club is a dream come true for him, but he can't shake that horrible feeling now permanently nestling in his gut.

Pausing for a moment to gather his thoughts, he takes a deep breath and tries to orientate himself.

He feels the coarse material of his uniform against his skin and the smooth grain of the desk against his fingertips.  
He smells the stuffy classroom air, and the light perfume - apple, perhaps? - gently wafting from Monika.  
He hears excited voices chattering in the background, offset by the melodic lilt of Monika's voice, enthusiastically speaking to him.  
He sees the buzz of activity in front of him, excited students packing up for the day, a few sending furtive glances to the perfect girl standing before him, who is freely offering him the opportunity of a lifetime with both hands.

(He should have known that nothing comes without a price.)

He feels anxiety and worry and guilt and an alarm is pounding in the back of his head screeching that something is wrong wrong wrong-

He wasn't feeling too good today.

Something is terribly wrong, yet terribly familiar. Holding his head in his hands, he takes a deep breath before meeting Monika's curious eyes.

He blinks once again as his vision inverts itself, _black and white, brown and blue, purple and green_ flashing across his vision. The sensory overload is almost too much and he tears his eyes away from her as he reorients himself. Another blink, and it was normal again, like nothing happened in the first place.

Monika doesn't react in the slightest, still eagerly attempting to persuade him, unaware of his sudden distraction. Meaning that it was his own hallucination. He is hallucinating. This is not good.

His eyes can't focus and his head is spinning in circles. The music in the background is distorted. It warbles in his ears, a single pitch too high, then a pitch too low. Why can he hear music?

He was barely paying attention as he accepted the offer to join her club. Monika is still speaking to him as they walk to the club room. The overwhelming sense of déjà vu is back again, and he knows where they are going, despite having never heard of the Literature Club before in his life. But he has heard of it. And he hasn't. 

Something is wrong, wrong, _wrong._

He should probably speak up. He needs to go to the hospital wing. Everything is tilting on an axis and his eyes are beginning to hurt. He feels like he could sleep forever.

The alarm bells going off in the back of his head slightly increased in pitch as Natsuki innocently offers him cupcakes.

\-----  
\--  
_Monika smiled sweetly, hands clasped behind her back. A blush rose unbidden to his cheeks._  
\--  
\-----

"…Sayo-"

_She hung limply, deathly silent, suspended in the air from a necklace of rope._

_Her beautiful blue eyes, usually filled with expressive laughter and joy, were half-lidded and empty and dull, blankly staring into nowhere. She wasn't breathing, and now he couldn't either._

_Ears filling with rushing water, he stared blindly at the horror before him, unaccepting. This wasn't supposed to happen, he thought desperately, vision turning blurry as unshed tears welled up and threatened to fall, his legs suddenly losing all strength._

_It was even crueller to realise she had struggled in the face of her death. This was inevitable, his traitorous mind whispered to him. His hands began to shake as he took in the sight of her bloody fingers hanging by her side, usually immaculate nails torn and ruined in a desperate attempt to free herself. Scratches adorned her throat, framing the noose there._

_His vision tunneled and his breathing grew panicked and shallow. Stumbling backwards, knees buckling, he grasped onto the doorknob for support. Was this a nightmare? It… has to be. This isn't real. But he knew it was and he couldn't look away._

_Someone was screaming and he realised in the back of his mind that it was him._

_He had seen her just yesterday. Three days ago, she had been the personification of joy and life itself and now all that remained was the corpse of a once-smiling girl hanging from her bedroom ceiling._

_What had happened?  
How had he managed to fail her so badly? How did things come to this?_

_Sayori was dead and he felt his heart shatter a little at the thought._

_He was drowning in the impossibility of the moment and-_

"Are you okay?" His head snaps up from the desk, drowsily blinking sleep out of his eyes. Monika stands in front of his desk, smiling gently at him, a knowing look in her eyes. "You're crying a little."

Wiping away the lone tear trail with the back of his hand, he reassuringly smiles back at Monika and nods in affirmation.

 _What a terrible, terrible dream_ , he muses to himself.

\-----  
\--  
_Happy thoughts, all in a row._  
\--  
\-----

The pieces of the broken puzzle haphazardly fit themselves together into a haphazard rendition of an ugly truth.

“ **fucking monikammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm** ”.

The bruises, the bandages, everything.

He was not prepared for joining this club. He can't write poems, and he isn't good at interacting with pretty girls. He feels so underwhelmingly average around them, and he constantly wonders why they asked him, of all people, to join their club. It's hard enough trying to act normal while desperately grasping the threads of his own fraying sanity.

He was not prepared for joining this club and he will never, ever, ever be prepared to deal with something like this.

He wants to weep and scream and cry against the injustice the world has heaped onto an innocent girl with too much to live for.

But what can he do for her? She wouldn't want his pity or sadness.

He had no idea what to do for someone who was possibly a victim of domestic abuse. He didn't want to ruin their friendship, and going to a teacher or authority figure would be an utter and complete betrayal of her trust in him. Her mother was gone, and going into the foster system meant she would lose consistency and stability, she might move schools, and he could see she was stressed beyond everything else. 

He could see it in the terse, almost defensive set of her shoulders, the growing aggression in her voice, the darkening bags under her eyes.

If he moves for her, he could save her for the cost of everything she has ever known. Or he could just be trading one misery for another.

He doesn't - he _can't_ do that to her.

There has to be _something_ he can do, right? Other than offer quiet support and an ear to listen to her troubles?

Nothing.

He does nothing.

Doesn't this make him the worst kind of coward?

Silently, the invisible weight on his chest grows. He's getting tired. The guilt doesn't leave him.

\-----  
\--  
_"It was only partially your fault."_  
\--  
\-----

He has déjà vu, once again.

He's already had this conversation, seen this book, shyly grasped this exact gift in his hands, flustered to receive such a heartfelt gift from such a pretty girl. Despite never having read the Eye of Markov before, he knows when he sees the front cover that the protagonist is similar to Yuri in many ways, of which she will deny.

He knows the sheen of the freshly pressed ink against the unmarked pages, the way the unassuming letters weave themselves into a story that they will share, somehow burned into his subconscious. He knows the way Yuri blushes prettily as their hands brush to turn the page - what?

What is happening to him?

He stays silent, confused, letting Yuri continue to talk to him in her melodic voice.  
"It's the kind that challenges you to look at life from a strange new perspective." Yuri says quietly, gently passionate about the book he now holds. Her hands clasp her copy of the hardback like it is something precious.

And he understands exactly what she means. He has read this book, but he hasn't.  
He knows exactly what she means but at the same time he has never understood less.

Yuri is talking, clueless about his inner turmoil. "When horrible things happen not just because someone wants to be evil..." She trails off suddenly, and he affixes his attention on her once again, snapped out of his thoughts.

He watches helplessly as Yuri's eyes dilate suddenly, black pupils expanding past where they should, perpetually flickering in motion yet steadfast in intensity, her voice deepening and lifting and distorting in a way that is almost grotesque in nature.

Her dead, dead, dead eyes are fixed on him, unmoving. " **But because the world is full of horrible people, and we're all worthless anyway.** "

Static rings in his ears as she speaks, whispering yet screaming in a voice that is somewhere in-between reverent and mocking in an incomprehensible paradox that is somehow just as unforgivable as it is enticing, focused only, purely, just on him.

" **Then, suddenlyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy** -" She cuts off just as suddenly as she began, and continues speaking like how she always used to. Hands shaking once again, he discreetly grasps the corner of the desk next to him for support, comforting himself that it wasn't real, he should probably go to the school nurse, he stayed up too late last night, it was just a hallucination.

Just a hallucination. Like just before.

Today was so not his day.

Now, Yuri smiles gently at him, the aberration behind her gentle lilac eyes gone for now, but not forever. It wasn't her, he knows that, but now he also knows there is a monster hiding in her gaze.

How could he possibly unsee something like that?  
He gently thanks her for the gift, and averts his eyes nervously, a little part of him terrified of meeting her eyes again.

He ignores how sharp the corner of her smile looks out of the corner of his eye.

\-----  
\--  
_"Can you hear me?"_  
\--  
\-----

Natsuki is grinning. Her voice is pleading and accusatory and the monster he sees in Yuri is now in her eyes. **Play with me** , she says. Her eyes are bleeding and covered in black squares.  
Her Glasgow smile shows too much teeth, and he is woefully unprepared for what happens next.

Her neck snaps with a sickening crack, and the world tunnels around him and it is all he can see. Overcome by a primal form of terror, he vaguely wonders which vertebrae it is he can see protruding just under the skin of her brutally snapped neck. He still can't breathe.

He blacks out less than a second later and-

**END**

When his eyes open, Natsuki is fine, reading manga against the wall of the classroom, and Monika is there in front of him with his badly written poem in hand.

Twenty seconds of utter confusion and near panic later, he gets a hold on his emotions. Ha ha. Hahahahahahahah. He's gone insane. It should be a long way down the rabbit hole, but he feels like he's already in Wonderland.

Nothing makes sense.

No one has noticed his confusion. He takes a shaky breath and resigns himself to continue listening to Monika in a woefully one-sided conversation. He is almost past caring whether she likes his poem or not.  
Calm down. Take a deep breath. Natsuki is fine, he is fine. Happy thoughts.

Think happy thoughts.

He closes his eyes and softly exhales.  
He opens them and firmly tells the demons to get out of his head.

\-----  
\--  
_"Play with me."_  
\--  
\-----

Hours later, as he lies in bed, the encompassing weight on his chest has only gotten heavier. He feels sick to his stomach.  
A badly written poem lies on his bedside table, full of contradicting diction and meaning and making about as much sense as his head is right now.

He is a mess of negative emotions. The guilt is overwhelming, but he has many reasons to feel it.  
He is guilty for being a terrible member of the club, quiet and non-interactive, creating tension and conflict among the girls.  
It's for taking advantage of Monika's innocent invitation to hopefully get a girlfriend and end his single life, if not temporarily.  
It's for the nameless blue-eyed girl as she hung from her ceiling fan.  
It's for flinching away from a confused Yuri as she reaches out from him with concern, mistaking her for what his hallucinations made him see.  
It's for his cowardly silence, damning Natsuki to more bruises and bandages at the hands of one who should have protected her against all odds.

It wasn't only that. Seeing eldritch abominations instead of cute girls is doing wonders for his mental instability.  
He saw a lot of hallucinations today. It was worse.

There was a closet, heavy breathing, and the eyes of that creature piercing into his very soul. He remembers waiting, tea and then a water fountain. A surreal number of cuts adorning Yuri's bared arms. Self-inflicted. A bloody pocket knife. The sound of his own beating heart filled his ears. Her mouth and his vision blurring and suddenly he's back in the classroom. Holding the water pitcher in both hands, Yuri is in front of him with an omniscient smile on her face, her sleeves pulled all the way down to her wrists. A perfect uniform on a seemingly perfect student.

And in the background Monika just smiles.

There was a hauntingly familiar carnival preparation discussion - he knows, he knows he's had this conversation before, the déjà vu is physically hurting him - until everything derails and Natsuki walks out in near-tears. And then **Who cares about that obnoxious brat?** Not-Yuri says, eyes wide and excited and deadly serious.

Then Real-Yuri is back, and he ignores her thinly veiled confession in order to calm himself down once again only for **Nobody would cry if she killed herself** to ring in his ears and echo in his mind like a broken record. Something bursts in her right eye and he flinches violently in response. It's still dripping crimson down her cheek ten minutes later. He doesn't think she noticed.

He doesn't remember going home.

Laughing shakily, he absently notes to himself that it is a lot easier to tear apart his own sanity than to put it back together again.

He sees angels with too many teeth and not enough holy in his dreams that night. The nameless blue-eyed girl is watching him again.

\-----  
\--  
_Monika smiled sweetly, and it sent chills up his spine._  
\--  
\-----

There is blood on the floor and on his hands and Yuri is dead in his arms.

This is his fault. Everything is his fault, once again. In the back of his mind, he ponders when exactly the first time was. His head hurts a little. He should have known. But then, how could he have known something like this would happen?

Yuri is dead. This isn't a hallucination.

He can feel the tenderness of her skin through the blood and he nearly convulses, barely holding back the rising bile in his throat. There is something incredibly faint, deep down, that screams at him to resist this uncontrollable, nonsensical delusion of his. Look further. What is happening to him? He's being pushed over the edge.

She is dead but now she has started to speak. How? The dead shouldn't speak. Irrational, nonsensical corrupted sounds flow from her mouth in a language he hopes he will never come to understand.

_An endless cacophony of meaningless noise._

Grasping her wrist, he fumbles around for some semblance of a pulse, something, _anything please please please._ Finding nothing, he keeps on trying and trying but there is nothing there and her wrist is getting cooler to his touch.  
The wet bloodstains on her chest and stomach have spread across the front of her uniform.

A flat murmur has replaced her usual quiet melodic lilt. He will likely never hear it again. Vaguely, he remembers a fact he learnt years ago - the voice is the first thing you will forget about someone. He doesn't want to forget her. And for this reason, as long as she speaks, he will listen.

She doesn't pause her nearly-silent incorrigible confession to an unknown god, and he cannot bring himself to leave Yuri when she has not yet said her final words. He prays, too. He begs with all his heart, praying to the negligent god overlooking the torture of a dead / not dead / undead / semi-dead / dead? girl.

So, he stays. The sky lightens with the arrival of Saturday morning, and he is still by her side. He will not leave of his own will anytime soon.

She is still speaking. The noise, it won't stop. She won't stop. It is no longer melodious to his ears but is now merely violent, grating waveforms, squeaking, screeching, piercing _sine, cosine, tangent, his path has diverged from what he wants and he is helpless as it spirals away from him his chest is hurting what is happening to him is there an explanation for this is he going insane probably but no matter what happens he will stay, stay here, and listen to the nonsensical regrets of a friend's corpse._

In the long hours he sits, listening. She sounds dead, if the dead could make a sound. She sounds like someone is playing a chalkboard on a turntable. Maybe like a vinyl on a pizza crust? He absently wonders if he will leave once this is all over. He desperately wants to leave and go somewhere, anywhere but here. In the meanwhile, he will stay, and Yuri will continue speaking with a dead, dead voice _~~like playing A KNIFE ON A BREATHING RIBCAGE.~~_

The crimson staining Yuri's clothes, the knife and the floor becomes a dark brown, her originally pale skin becomes a dull grey, and her small smile disappears as her skin's moisture evaporates and her skin tightens.

She is undeniably, irrevocably dead.

She is still singing to him. Singing an endless poem of meaningless noise.

Her eyes are now a pale, dull lilac, a mere shadow of the brilliance they once were, just like Sayori's when she-  
Oh. That girl again?

He wants to know, with all of his being.  
What happ-  
When di-  
Who w-  
Why-

Something is undeniably broken with this world. Or is it his mind?

He needs to fix this.

With this thought, he sees luminescent green code flash across a void behind his eyes. It disappears as suddenly as it appears and it leaves him reeling.

_What is happening to him?_

His grip on what should be reality slips even further. The weekend inches on and Yuri continues to sing her own funeral song.

\-----  
\--  
_"It's just a game, mostly."_  
\--  
\-----

It's just Monika and him, in a classroom.

She is talking to him, but not to him at the same time. Someone in his head, behind his eyes. She loved them, would do anything for them, just like the girl with beautiful blue eyes would for him-

That girl again. He knows her but he doesn't, but she must have existed, she has to exist because otherwise his chest wouldn't hurt every time he thinks of her smile. Nothing adds up. He's probably insane. It is a slight comfort to know Monika is just as crazy as he's become.

He wants to know with all of his being what is happening to him.  
What is causing the terrible hallucinations that torture him? Why does he feel so sick all the time? Who is that girl with the blue eyes, who perpetually haunts his dreams?

Everything feels wrong. _Why does it feel so wrong?_

He entertains the possibility of playing along, staying with Monika in this strange not-classroom. Could he be happy here? Perhaps, but in the end the one she loves isn't him. If you love someone, you shouldn't lie to them. He didn't want to betray her love.

He wasn't prepared for this situation. He had no idea what to say. There was no information for a situation like this in his script.  
_Script?_

He stays silent at this revelation.

What script?

\-----  
\---  
_"This game is not suitable for children / or those who are easily disturbed?"_  
\---  
\-----

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not afraid to admit it, but I've wanted to write a ddlc fix-it since approximately ten seconds after I finished the game the first time. And whoop-de-woo, would you look at what popped up in my drafts approximately twenty seconds after that decision. Please enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own DDLC, but damn, I wish I did.


End file.
